New York Theatre Workshop has opened its inaugural season of Next Door at NYTW in the newly renovated Fourth Street Theatre. This initiative provides artists subsidized resources and space for development and performance of their work. NYTW is a hugely successful off-Broadway house, as evidenced by seventeen Tony Awards (after the shows moved uptown), the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards its productions have garnered. Shows I have seen there include Hundred Days, Nat Turner in Jerusalem, Othello (with Daniel Craig), Red Speedo, Hadestown, What’s It All About?, Belleville, Once and Peter and the Starcatchers. All of them excellent. So why not try their new, even more experimental work?
A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds is a Mac Wellman play based on two of his short stories in a collection of the same name. The notes state that each story is told by one of the imagined inhabitants of a small world in the asteroid belt. Act One is Wu World Woo, performed by Timothy Siragusa. This monologue describes a world of grotesque violence largely concerning his family. Everyone in Wu (or is it Woo?) has the same name, Mary Carniverous Rabbit. The piece is completely manic; serious yet funny.
Act Two, titled Horrocks (and Toutatis too), has a completely different tone. Anastasia Olowin appears in a flowing white gown, is mostly seated and delivers her story which begins with her being chased by brutish boys throwing rocks at her. The quiet intensity of her performance elevates the language and nails the playful silliness which is intertwined with the semi-serious. Accompanying both of these pieces is a four member band who have created a phenomenal score which I can only describe as exquisite B-movie science fiction musicality.
For those yearning to see something different, more experimental and more downtown, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds is worth a try.
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